Jeffrey Bowman named McCoy Teaching Professor

Associate Professor of History Jeffrey A. Bowman became the third John B. McCoy-Bank One Distinguished Teaching Professor on July 1. He succeeded Associate Professor of English Theodore O. Mason in the four-year rotating position.

Bowman was selected based on an application process that included an examination of his teaching as well as a written proposal outlining a plan to encourage the exchange of ideas about good teaching practice at the College through seminars, presentations, and discussion.

A member of the Kenyon history department faculty since 1997, Bowman has taught courses on such topics as medieval Spain, peace and violence in the Middle Ages, and private life during the medieval period. His first book, Law, Conflict, and Community Around the Year 1000: Property Disputes in the Province of Narbonne, will be released by Cornell University Press in 2003. Bowman has received a number of grants, including a recent Whiting Foundation Summer Research Grant and another from the Stanford Humanities Institute.

"Kenyon's faculty should cultivate a deep understanding of how students experience liberal arts education," writes Bowman. "In student backpacks and on student schedules, chemistry and political science, dance and Russian, art history and mathematics live cheek by jowl. We should be ready to educate our students not only about the discrete charms of our own disciplines but also about connections that link one field of knowledge, one way of understanding the universe, to others."

The McCoy-Bank One Distinguished Teaching Chair was established in 1998 with a $1.5-million gift from former trustee chair John B. McCoy and the Bank One Corporation with the goals of providing a mentor for new professors and of fostering excellence in teaching at Kenyon.

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